It took Rimmer Dall first, sucking out the First Seeker’s life as if drawing smoke into its lungs. Rimmer Dall shuddered violently, collapsed in a scattering of ashes, and ceased to exist. The light went after the other Shadowen then, who were already fleeing in hopeless desperation, and swallowed them up one after the other. Finally it rose to consume Southwatch, racing up the black walls, into the pulsing obsidian stone. Par was dragged to his feet by Walker, who bent to snatch up the Sword of Shannara. Walker called to Morgan, and in seconds they were gathering the others as well, hauling them up, carrying those who could not stand. Rumor led the way as they surged toward a tunnel at the chamber’s far end, racing to escape the cataclysm.
Overhead, Southwatch exploded into the morning sky in a geyser of fire and ash.
Stresa was the first to feel the tremors and hiss in warning at Wren. “Elf Queen. Phfftt! Do you feel it? Hsst! Hsst! The earth moves!”
Wren stood slightly apart from Triss, the Elfstones clutched in her hand as she watched the coming of the Federation army, awaiting her confrontation with the Creepers. They had reached the mouth of the Valley of Rhenn, and with the front lines of the Elves and their allies less than three hundred yards away, the battle she dreaded was about to commence. Barsimmon Oridio, Padishar Creel, Chandos, and Axhind had dispersed to their various commands. Tiger Ty had gone to be with the Wing Riders. Home Guard surrounded the queen on all sides, but she felt impossibly alone.
She turned at the Splinterscat’s words, then felt the tremors herself. “Triss,” she whispered.
For the earth was shuddering more deeply with each series of quakes that passed through it, as if a beast coming awake to the rising of the sun, to the coming of the light. It shook itself from sleep, and its growl rose above the beating of the Federation drums and the marching of the soldiers’ feet.
Wren caught her breath in dismay.
What was happening?
Then fire and smoke erupted far to the east and south, rising up against the sunlight in a wild conflagration, and the quaking turned to a desperate heaving. The men of the opposing armies paused in their confrontation and turned to look, eyes scanning the horizon, cries beginning to ring out. The fire and smoke grew into a cloud of black ash, and then suddenly there was a tremendous burst of white light that filled the sky with its brightness, pulsing and alive. It rose in a wild sweep, racing across the sun and back again, running with the wind and the clouds.
When it flew down into the earth again, the shudders began anew, rising and falling, filling the air with sound.
Then the light burst forth within the valley, spears of it breaking through the earth’s crust, rising up through the terrified men. Wren gasped at its brightness and felt the Elfstones digging into the flesh of her palm as she gripped them tightly in response.
The light sped this way and that, yet not at random as she had first believed but with deadly intent. It caught the Creepers first, tore them asunder, and left them smoking and ruined and lifeless. It caught the Seekers next, enfolding them in shrouds of death, draining them of life, and leaving them in piles of smoking ash. It raced through the Federation army, weeding its ranks of Shadowen-kind, and in doing so stole away its purpose and courage, and the soldiers who remained turned and fled for their lives, throwing down their weapons, abandoning their fortifications and assault machines, giving up any hope but that of staying alive. Within seconds it was finished, the Creepers and the Shadowen destroyed, the soldiers of the Federation army in flight, the grasslands littered with the discards and leavings of battle. It happened so fast that the Elves, free-born, and Rock Trolls did not even have time to respond, too stunned to do anything but stare after and then to glance hurriedly through their own ranks to make certain that the light had not touched them.
On the bluff at the head of the valley where she had watched it all happen, Wren Elessedil exhaled slowly into the following hush. Triss stood next to her openmouthed. Stresa’s breathing was a rasp at her boot. She swallowed against the dryness in her throat and then looked out across the Valley of Rhenn in astonishment as one final miracle came to pass.
All across the parched and barren plains, for as far as the eye could see, wildflowers were blooming in the sunlight.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“What was inside the light, Walker?” Coll asked.
It was midmorning, and they were gathered in the shade of the trees on the slopes leading down from the Runne north of the ruins of Southwatch. Below, the Shadowen keep continued to steam and smoke and burn, its walls collapsed into rubble, the once-smooth black stone turned brittle and dull. Walker sat alone to one side, wrapped in the torn remnants of his dark robes. Par and Coll sat across from him. Morgan was leaning against the broad trunk of a red maple, chewing on a bit of grass and looking at his boots. Matty Roh was propped up next to him, her shoulder touching his. Damson lay sleeping a few yards off. They were battered and worn and covered with blood and dust, and Coll had broken an arm and ribs. But the tension had left their bodies and the wariness had faded from their eyes. They weren’t running anymore, and they weren’t afraid.
“It was magic,” Par said with quiet conviction. They had fled the cellars of the Shadowen keep through the tunnel Walker had chosen, stone crumbling and falling in chunks all about them as they raced through the underground gloom with only the Druid fire to guide them. The tunnel twisted and wound, and it seemed that they would never get clear in time. They could hear the sounds of the keep’s destruction behind them, feel the thrust of stale air and dust against their backs as the walls collapsed inward. They feared they would be trapped, but Walker seemed certain of the way, so they followed without question. At last the tunnel opened out through a cluster of brush onto a low hillside above the keep, and from there they scrambled upward into the shelter of the trees to watch the conflagration of fire and smoke that marked the keep’s demise. Damson was unconscious again, and Walker labored over her intently, using the Druid magic, healing her as he had healed Par weeks earlier when the Valeman had been poisoned by the Werebeasts. Her injuries made her feverish, but Walker brought the fever down, cooling her so that she could sleep. While he worked, the others washed and bound themselves as best they could.
Now, the sunlight stretching toward the hills west, they sat looking back across the flats where Southwatch smoldered. Everywhere they looked, there were wildflowers, come into bloom with the collapse of the Shadowen keep and the return of the light to the earth. A profusion of color, the blossoms blanketed the whole of the land for as far as the eye could see, covering even those areas that had been sickened and ravaged. Their smell drifting lightly on the morning air seemed to signal a new beginning.
“Stolen magic,” Walker Boh amended.
What Par had been shown by the magic of the Sword of Shannara, Walker had been able to intuit with his Druid instincts. Walker’s dark eyes were ringed in ash and dirt and his face was drawn, yet there was strength in his steady gaze. They had finished sharing their separate stories and were now considering the reasons behind everything that had happened to them.
Walker’s face lifted. “The light was the magic the Shadowen stole from the earth. It was how they gained their power. Elven magic in the time of faerie borrowed from the elements, most particularly from the earth, for the earth was its greatest source. When the Elves recovered that lost magic after Allanon’s death, the Shadowen were the renegades among them who sought to use it in ways for which it was not intended. Like the Skull Bearers and the Mord Wraiths before them, the Shadowen came to rely on the magic so heavily that eventually it subverted them. They became addicted to it, reliant on it for their survival. Eventually it was their sole reason for being. They stole it in small doses at first, and when the need grew stronger, when they wanted power enough to control the destiny of the races and the Four Lands, they built Southwatch to drain the magic off in massive amounts. They found a way to leach it from the core of the earth and chain what they had stolen beneath the keep. Southwatch, and the magic they gathered within, became the source of their power everywhere. But as they used it to propagate, to create things like the Creepers, to strengthen themselves, they weakened the earth from which the magic had been taken. The Four Lands began to sicken because the magic was no longer strong enough to keep them healthy.”